Ontology

Aside from being a cool word and one of those subjects that affect everyone but to which few people pay attention, there are actually some interesting arguments going on that I think interest/involve people outside the library field.

Read this article: Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags (warning, it's a long-ish one)

This one definitely has a flavor of information magically being generated by everyone working together, but it doesn't go off the deep end. This was good and brought up several issues that I hadn't thought about. Largely how most current organizational systems are snapshots of how the organizers/designers view the world, and not really how the world is truly arranged.

Quick example, the Dewey Decimal System's organization of religions:

Dewey, 200: Religion
210 Natural theology
220 Bible
230 Christian theology
240 Christian moral & devotional theology
250 Christian orders & local church
260 Christian social theology
270 Christian church history
280 Christian sects & denominations
290 Other religions

Does it seem to have a certain assumption about how the world is organized? Ditto with the LOC; there are areas of categorization that have no real basis on how the world exists but rather on how it's efficient to store the physical books. For a system that deals with the physical books, and not just the ideas inside the books this is necessary and good, but it is an artificial constraint when dealing with electronically stored information. Yahoo kept some of the physical constraints even though they have an electronic information system.

One of the things the writer doesn't really go into, is that while the information generated by the masses all assigning their own 'tags' to information like webpages is very useful and possibly one of the 'best' ways to get around organic, large, blobs of information, it VERY quickly breaks down when detailed or specialized information is reliably needed.

Want to rely on the Internet to give you the right places to brush up on brain surgery? I hope not! Want to rely on the Internet to give you the best places to get information about buying a digital camera. Internet rules! Want to rely that the Internet will point you to accurate information about population statistics? Well, maybe if you're careful.

Anyway, I thought it was a cool article!

Pot calling the kettle black

eBay Falls Into Google's Sticky Arms
Two dot-com giants are back in good graces as they team up to take over the world.

This little gem of a headline was found on MSN - Microsoft's News. I personally think that's a riot - Microsoft accusing someone else of trying to take over the world.

People getting married

There seems to be a bunch of them all of a sudden! Or at least I've been extra sensitive to noticing them. Or I've finally been catching up on blogs.

Found out just after I got back from Kansas that Heidi and Mike are getting hitched on the 9th. Then I was reminded that Avril's wedding is coming up in October (can't remember the date). And then just tonight I read that Estrada is getting married TOMORROW!

Sigh, another 4 months. But that's only 18 weeks away! C mentioned that to me a day or two ago and it really hit me - 18 weeks! The day really is coming!

We looked at two houses today after a clogging performance up in PA. One was a nice house just east of here and I think we both really like it. Problem though, he's asking well above our price level and I have my doubts as to their willingness to drop enough. Second house - not as nice and smaller and needs a fair bit of fixing up, but it will hopefully be affordable, and once it is fixed up it will be a nice place and would sell for a lot more than what we would buy it for.

I'm not holding my breath on either location. The more I looked at the smaller house the less thrilled I was to delve into the sort of work needed, and some of the things can't be fixed - like smallness. The more I looked at the larger place the more I liked it, but the less I think he will be willing to come down to our price range.

Please keep us in prayers.

War in the Youth Group

YG went really well last night I thought. We've still got several people out on summer break so it was a bit sparse, only 4 kids, but Al. came and participated quite a lot. He's a foreign exchange student from Kazakhstan.

So I taught all the kids when it's OK Biblically to go around killing as many people as you can - when you're in a war! (Ok, so maybe I didn't say it quite that way.) As I've done extra studying for this, I really have come to the conclusion that pacifism can't be Biblically required of people. God may put it upon their hearts individually that they should not resist lawless aggression or serve in the military, but the Bible pretty clearly allows Christians to serve in the military and be policemen with a clear conscience. I had a vague feeling going into this that a pacifistic stance was Biblically a higher calling, though not required. I've changed that thought a bit - it's a calling that may be laid upon a person individually, but not one that is inherently better than a calling to serve as a policeman or soldier.

Here's my quick synopsis:

Verses all over the place calling Christians to be a peace, to not return evil for evil, to turn the other cheek, to do good to them who harm us, to not seek revenge.

These are all dealing with people's individual relationships, and our response to personal offenses, not our response to crime and lawlessness.

When dealing with military people in the Bible, no one ever tells them in any way, shape or form to leave their service. Soldiers ask John the Baptist what they should do and he tells them to not extort money. (Lk 3) Jesus doesn't say anything to the centurion whose daughter he raises. Peter goes to Cornelius' house and gives a long sermon, but never mentions anything about leaving the military.

Soldiers are used as examples to be emulated throughout the NT. If the Bible taught a strict pacifism it would be ridiculous to use people who we should never be as examples of how we should behave.

The parable of the wicked vineyard renters has the owner killing them for their crimes. Parables are true in their "mundane" state as well as in their symbolism. Paul says that rulers and nations wield the sword for good.

Both the OT and NT tell of God as conquering His enemies through warfare at times.

Ok, this is all the time I had at home and now I'm posting this at work, so I can't finish this off any more. Hopefully that gets across most of what I covered.

Walk Thru the OT

I don't know how many people have gone to any productions by Walk Through the Bible, but I would definitely recommend it very highly! C&I went to one in Hamilton this last Saturday and we're still going strong from it. If anyone sees one of us, please ask us to do the history of the Old Testament hand series. They have a great program that they will bring to churches to help people learn and keep track of what goes on in the OT with the main goal being to encourage people to read the Bible daily.

We've started going through their 30 day, daily Bible reading program, and while I think the daily reading itself is pretty basic, it's helped spawn a few more really good discussions.

Coming up in November is the Walk Through the New Testament and I'm really looking forward to it. The OT class was so excellent that I can't wait for the NT class! Has anyone done the NT class before?

Encryption fun with math

Ever wonder how encryption keys get set up? I mean, they have to agree on a key to encrypt things, but if someone is listening in on the whole communication, wouldn't they get the key themselves and still be able to decrypt the data being passed back and forth?

Well, here's how they get a key number that both people can agree upon without someone who is listening in the middle finding out what the key is. It's a slick little math trick.

Let's say we have two people, Alice and Bob, who want to set up an encryption code. But there's an evesdropper, Eve, who's listening in the middle. We'll keep track of what each person knows about the communications and in the end, Alice and Bob will wind up with the same secret number to use in encryption and Eve won't be able to know it, though she will know some other non-vital stuff.

First everyone knows the formula that is going to be used to generate the keys: g^x mod p. Second Alice and Bob agree on what g and p will be (and Eve will listen in). g should be a prime, so let's say 2. p can be any number, so let's say 61.

Right now everyone knows:
2^x mod 61

Alice picks a random number for herself. We'll call it xa and let it be 17. Ditto for Bob - we'll call it xb and let it be 8.

Alice runs it on her side and gets: 2^17 mod 61 = 44. She'll send just the RESULT to Bob, and Eve will listen in.

Bob will do the same: 2^8 mod 61 = 12 and send just the RESULT to Alice (and Eve listens in).

So now here's what people know:
Alice knows g=2, p=61, her own secret number, and Bob's result of 12.

Bob knows g=2, p=61, his own secret number, and Alice's result of 44.

Eve knows g=2, p=61, and the results of 44 and 12. She does NOT know xa or xb because Bob and Alice haven't exchanged those values.

Alice and Bob take the other person's result and plug it into the formula again.

Alice: (bob's result)^xa mod 61 (12^17 mod 61=22)
Bob: (alice's result)^xb mod 61 (44^8 mod 61=22)

Now they each have the same resulting number, and all Eve knows are the intermediate results that were passed back and forth.

Eve knows 2^(A's number) mod 61=44 and 2^(B's number) mod 61=12. This is NOT enough for Eve to figure out what the final result that Alice and Bob have come to. The only way she can know that is to randomly start plugging in numbers and check the results to see if they work. With low numbers like we've used it is easily doable for a computer. But real systems use numbers of 300 digits or more, and it would take billions of years for today's supercomputers to crank through all the possibilities, making it virtually impossible for Eve to discover the secret number that Alice and Bob are using as a key.

This is VERY simplified, but it is one of the basic ways that two different people can come to use the same key to encrypt and decrypt messages without someone who is listing in the middle find out what the key is.

So yeah, I'm a geek, but this is COOL!

Ethical Studies

Here's a quick ethical question that I'll toss out there - why was Abraham reprimanded by God when he lied while Rahab has been honored throughout the ages for lying to protect the spies? (FYI, I don't think Marshal's answer about Rahab not knowing any better and just doing the best she knew how is right. It may have some validity, but not enough. The spies that were sent in certainly knew God's law and presumably they lied,or at the very least bore false witness, and they weren't reprimanded for lying.) Abraham was scolded because he didn't trust in God, that one's easy. But what about the spies and Rahab, didn't they lie all over the place? Rahab and Ruth are the only women mentioned in the line of Jesus' OT ancestors, and that's a list of some of the most revered people in Jewish ancient history. God certainly didn't hold the lies against her or the spies that we can see.

"Lies" is one of the topics that we're starting up with the YG as part of the broader topic of Christian Ethics. This example was mainly to get the kids talking and involved. VC is an excellent teacher, but he doesn't get the kids involved very much. So now that we've finished up the old topic in YG, I'm trying to start it out with a few raucous debates among the kids, even if the teaching/learning the YG does is limited for a while.

Tomorrow I'm doing Christians in War (focusing on the National level) and hopefully it will also be able to draw them into actually talking during and about the lesson. An added bonus is that VC mentioned that he believes the Bible teaches that Christians ought to be pacifists, though to what extent he means that I don't know. Normally I probably wouldn't have paid much attention to what pacifists say, but in getting ready for this lesson I have been reading some of their reasons and so far I haven't been impressed, though I can see a couple partial pacifist positions that could be argued should apply to Christians universally. But the broad stroke pacifism as applying to almost every form of violence? Nope, I can't see that the arguments I've seen for that are based in reality or scripture. I'll be interested to see where VC comes in on this. He's doing next week's YG on Warfare giving his understanding of the Bible. I'm hoping that the kids will be intrigued by two different positions taken on the topic and both supported Biblically. We'll see!

Any thoughts on the Warfare for Christians? How about the lying Rahab question? And yes, I know that I slanted the Rahab question a bit. It's a bit of a squirrelly question.

(Mom, whenever I think of 'squirrelly' I think of Dunham's case that you judged back in debate where he tried to define the round so that there was no other option but for him to win. It's an AWESOME technique - tricky to catch, and easy to turn into a confused morass. It was a good catch by the other team.)

My Busy Fiance

Wow, I knew C was busy on her trip out to KS, but I had never put it all together into one spot to think of everything she did. And then I read her blog and it reminded me how GLAD I am that I don't have to worry about dresses - rented tuxes are more my speed.

And I haven't been able to see what the dress looks like! C has a picture of it (sans sleeves) that she's shown to people, but I can't look! I like to read the ending first, I like to know how the story ends, I like to know what to expect, I want to know what the dress looks like! :^)

Oh well, suffering is good for the soul, or so I've heard.

Welcome back from Kansas!

And from 100+ degree weather! While I was sojourning to the land of wheat, tornados, and Oz, the hot weather in Virginia finally broke, it was only in the low 90s when we all got back!

We hit the Harper County 4H Fair where both Lu and St won awards for their photography, as well as a couple awards that Lu won for her clothes designing. She had sewn a REALLY sharp business skirt-suit that won Grand Champion or Reserve Grand Champion! Awesome job!

Jeremiah was thrilled with the show, though he didn't last for long stretches there since the temps were running 100+. But every time anyone said that we were going to the fair, he would start shouting,

"And see more pigs and more pigs and more pigs and more pigs and more cows and more cows and more cows and more cows and more sheeps and more sheeps and more sheeps and more goats and more goats and more goats and more goats?!?"

Yeah, he liked the fair.

And he rode on a red tractor (far superior to a green tractor), played firehouse and tractors for hours with SR, shot a paintball gun with impressive accuracy, played with a duckling, rode all over the country in trucks, cleaned wheat, sprayed me with a hose, learned to play with spit and an air compressor, loved flying on airplanes, and loved (even more) watching the airplanes and trucks that run around on the tarmac. And especially for traveling on a plane to a completely different place with mostly unknown people to do very different activities, he did VERY well. He was a bit demanding and got upset/whiny a bit more easily, but mostly it was only when he got tired.

C was extremely busy on this trip, most of it accomplished before I got there (which may say something about me and my productivity) and as a result we now have all the bridesmaids dresses done, the wedding dress done, a bunch of the smaller things needed for the wedding, and the wedding rings! Now, it's invitations, programs, flowers, food, housing, and honeymoon.

C&I even got a chance to cover the questions that our marriage counseling book has for us to work out with our folks. I'm still not sure what I'll wind up using - mom, dad, mother, father, or what. My dad didn't have any trouble thinking of what he'd like C to call him, though -

"Hmm, how about 'Superman'?"

I'm going to have to remember that for when it comes up with me, only I'll probably go for Batman. :^)

Kansas or Bust

C is out in Kansas now and has even done some wedding dress shopping out there, though I haven't checked in to see if anything came up as a possibility. Bridesmaids dresses and colors are going to be decided upon and started too. I have a suspicion that C will have a busier than normal visit home this time. And when we get back, we've been planning on doing some more wedding ring shopping.

On the groom's side of the wedding/marriage preparations, I'm slowly finding more and more houses that are getting closer to our price range as prices in this area fall. And renting for a while is becoming more of a possibility - it's probable that if we rent for six months, prices could fall another $20 or $30 thousand. I've got some ideas for the tuxes for myself and the groomsmen. It's a little bit complicated by the guys being spread around a bit geographically, but chain stores and a bit of flexibility seem to make it all nicely workable. Next up (and currently being worked on) are the honeymoon arrangements.

Any good suggestions anyone? What to avoid, what was great, where was particularly wonderful?

Aside from wedding preparations, I'm bravely holding up here, all alone, not a friend in the world, just me, all by myself, no one to keep me company, no C, woe is me, sniffle, sniffle. Of course I'm also busy enough that I don't have time to miss her yet. There's a good 40 things I'd like to do before Jeremiah and I head out on Monday, and something tells me that I'm going to be lucky to get 10 done.

Also, could I ask for some prayer for my coworker, AP? He's been having health problems and everything seems to be piling on top of him - family, housemates, housing troubles, running out of sick-leave, car troubles, etc. He could really use some prayer.

While I'm putting up prayer requests, I'd like to stick myself out for a bit of prayer. Recently it feels like I've been trying to do everything on my own without depending upon God's strength. Billions of people get along in life that way, but life is so much better when it's following God that I don't want to try doing life without Him. Especially now that it's not just me who'll be affected.

And two prayer requests for some people who need a lot of physical healing. First is the Wilhoite family. I knew Brandon while he was at PHC and he's now married with a new baby, but his wife Amy has Myelogenous Leukemia and is undergoing heavy duty treatments in the hospital. Wilhoite Prayer Blog The second prayer would be for the granddaughter of some good friends from church in PA. Their grandaughter Kayla was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. It's just happened and not much beyond that is known.